You can sometimes use a flathead to screw in a philips, but that doesn't mean it's ideal.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple TV Games Must Work With Apple TV Remote, May Not Require External Controller
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You can sometimes use a flathead to screw in a philips, but that doesn't mean it's ideal.
This is some of the worst justification mental gymnastics I've ever seen. You're clearly not a gamer and just want to convince yourself in your mind that the situation is acceptable.
Atari 2600 games aren't even remotely acceptable today as real games worth more than a dollar or two as a novelty. The controls are too simple for any meaningful gameplay or depth. If Apple released a new Mac without a mouse or GUI, would you say "well, back in the early 1980's people made good software in the command line, so I'm sure this will do fine"?
While the Apple TV is not, first and foremost, a gaming machine, it is as throughly handicapped as a gaming machine as a mouse less Mac or PC would be as a Photoshop machine if Apple actually enforces this rule.
And the fact that you think Atari 2600 games are remotely acceptable to modern gamers tells me you don't know anything about the modern game market or people who enjoy them. It's like telling people "well they had video editing software in the 90's, what's the difference?" The art has progressed dramatically.
Actually, I'd like to see someone try to play a game like Mattel Intellivision's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with an iPhone type controller. It would be laughable. It has 16-direction movement, 8-direction firing arrow controls, run buttons, a pickup button, a count arrows button and an exit button.
Controls:
Oddly, it does map well (via emulator) to a dual-stick controller, though which is about what is necessary to account for the numeric keypad controls + directional disc controls used in the original game. Even then, the disc had twice as many possible positions (16) as a modern controller for movement.
YouTube video of the game:
Yeah, make that 1982 game work wellon the new AppleTV or iPhone. A game doesn't have to be modern to need better controls than 4-buttons and a gyroscope can provide.
Yes, we are (arguing different things.) No one thinks that the Apple remote isn't designed very well for browsing the AppleTV UI. We get that. The thing that makes no sense is Apple's decision to require AppleTV games to be able to work with the AppleTV remote when more-than-casual games require a more advanced controller,... a controller that fits into your hands well and has many buttons. Anything other than a casual game will not be (a) coming to the AppleTV Game Store or (b) be all that it should be.
All Apple had to do is put controller-only type games in their own section and maybe even color-code the background (like they do in iTunes these days based on the album cover prevalent color) and put a HUGE warning "controller only" logo at the top of the screen. Yeah, some morons might still claim ignorance, but so what. Offer refunds if you want or ignore them. Who cares. The point is that there are a lot of cool games that would/should work that now won't due to a bad decision at Apple. If Apple doesn't want to offer their own controller, they could sell "Apple APPROVED controllers" on their store or whatever. It's not like it's a big deal. XBox and PS3/4 controllers all get the same job done. It's down to preference of orientation of the controls, really.
As it is, if I want to play Atari 2600 games on my existing Apple TV (Gen2 no less), I just output Stella via Airplay on my Mac Mini and use my PS3 Bluetooth controller (works on the other side of the house no less just fine). I can then play any Mac-based controller compatible game on that AppleTV and it's only a Gen2 unit. The Gen3 $69 special can do the same thing and it works NOW and with just about any Mac game that you have enough power to output smoothly. I don't know how well a first person shooter would work (I suppose I could go try Borderlands 2 on it), but I had no lag on emulator games or something like The Cave or Limbo. I prefer to play keyboard games on the computer, but I suppose I could get a Bluetooth keyboard and/or mouse and play them in the living room too. But the obvious nice thing is that the games already exist, already work and use whatever controls they use on the Mac. Apple is blind to possibilities, but then they never did get gaming for some dumb reason (I don't think Steve liked gaming).
As it is, if I want to play Atari 2600 games on my existing Apple TV (Gen2 no less), I just output Stella via Airplay on my Mac Mini and use my PS3 Bluetooth controller (works on the other side of the house no less just fine). I can then play any Mac-based controller compatible game on that AppleTV and it's only a Gen2 unit. The Gen3 $69 special can do the same thing and it works NOW and with just about any Mac game that you have enough power to output smoothly. I don't know how well a first person shooter would work (I suppose I could go try Borderlands 2 on it), but I had no lag on emulator games or something like The Cave or Limbo. I prefer to play keyboard games on the computer, but I suppose I could get a Bluetooth keyboard and/or mouse and play them in the living room too. But the obvious nice thing is that the games already exist, already work and use whatever controls they use on the Mac. Apple is blind to possibilities, but then they never did get gaming for some dumb reason (I don't think Steve liked gaming).
Right... like when the original iPhone came out, Apple said, "Look, here's the API and some development tools and developers can create apps and we'll sell them on an app store..."
Oh wait... that's the opposite of what happened. (Only "web-based" apps were supported, denied all plans or interest in opening it up to outside developers for native apps for over a year after introduction.)
I wonder how will it be. The new apple tv has wifi AC, same as new iPhones and iPads. Third generation rev 1 was at 65Mbps wifi N (and no 5ghz and p2p support), rev 2 is 150Mbps wifi N with 5Ghz and p2p support. Here Airplay is already MUCH better than rev 1
Airplay uses video compression. Therefore the lag is not just due to WiFi speed, but due to the fact the screen is first composited on the iOS device's GPU, then compressed, packed, transmitted over WiFi, unpacked, decompressed, and eventually handed over to the Apple TV GPU for display, with both GPUs using pipelined deferred tile-based rendering (which both GPUs thus adding 1 or more frames of delay/lag).
That makes sense, but most games I've tried, I've had no noticeable issues on my Quad-i7. I have seen some issues on lesser Macs (dual-core i5 for example) on highly timing sensitive games like Pinball Arcade. Clearly, it won't work for every game that plays OK at your terminal, but many platformers (which are timing dependent for jumping, etc.) played just fine. Since my PS3 controller is connected directly to the Mac via Bluetooth and not the AppleTV, the input lag is not an issue. It's only a question of whether AppleTV updates the Airplay display in a timely fashion and that seems more signal dependent than anything else (i.e. low lag WiFi = better performance). I say seem since it hasn't been an issue thus far, but I have kept the games mostly to ones I would play with a controller and haven't played games on it that are iffy at times on the Mac itself (e.g. Borderlands 2 or something that will slow down in frame rate if things get too intense on the screen). Generally, if it can keep a stable frame rate above the output level of the Airplay, it seems to be stable thus far, but I've only tried so many games. Frankly, I'm amazed it works as well as it does. Certainly, something like Atari 2600 games on an emulator output pose no challenge that I can detect.